The Astros and the Phillies in the World Series? Didn't see that coming.
The Detroit Lions lost a winnable game? Saw that coming.
Halloween is next Monday. Is that your Halloween too or have they moved it?
It's supposed to be warm today and tomorrow, then that's probably it for 2022 around here. Ah well. Had to happen sometime, at least here in Michigan.
Maybe I did actually see the Astros in the Series, come to think of it. Surprised the Yankees sent so quietly though.
And...bye for now.
Yesterday the baseball season began, and thankfully it was no cruel April Fools Day joke. 13 of the 15 scheduled games were played. Hopefully we can get an entire season in, with increasing attendance.
I got in from a road trip in time to catch most of the Tigers first game, followed by the end of the Toronto-New York Yankees match. In the best tradition of organized sports I will offer my first objection to new rules: I do not like, I do not like at all, starting extra innings with a runner already on second base. It takes away from the last at bat advantage, among other things. But more unwanted analysis on that later. This is a time to be happy and excited that baseball is back.
On that front, to use the stilted but clever and funny verbiage of cartoonist Nathan Pyle, my regional orbcatchers are 1-0 and on a pace to finish 162-0. It's a good feeling. An Opening Day kind of feeling.
Everyone is in contention, on Opening Day, to win the World Series. And as my beloved Detroit Tigers won and have today off before playing game two of the 2021 Season tomorrow, I get to bask in that glow. Too soon the inevitable alternate reality, the alternate reality which comes, sadly, to 29 of the 30 MLB teams each year, sets in.
Let it wait until Saturday. Or, God willing, Sunday. Or maybe, just maybe, until the final out of the 2021 World Series is made. That is the ultimate hope of Opening Day.
That's when last night's game ended, with a walk off home run in the bottom of the 18th inning to give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 3-2 win. Now the Series is 2-1 Boston. And to all you naysayers who think baseball games need to be shortened or quickened, bear in mind that games like this are anomalies, aberrations. So they played two games last night. It won't happen again for a long time, especially in a World Series.
It was a pretty good game, that said. Good pitching and good defense, although there probably was a little too little offense of course. But that happens. Sure, it wouldn't hurt baseball to play during the day at least once in awhile, or maybe begin an hour or so earlier. Yet as odd as it was, hey, that's baseball.
That part I wouldn't change if I could.
Fifty years ago today I raced home from school in time to see the Detroit Tigers win the World Series. That seems so long ago. Of course, at eight years old I wasn't exactly looking fifty years into the future. I doubt I could have imagined fifty years then.
Now I can. Wow. Time does fly.
I can't believe it's been fifty years. Fifty years since I rushed home from school in time to see Jim Northrup's triple put the Tigers ahead to stay in the seventh inning of game seven. Since Bill Freehan's joyful catch of Mickey Lolich after the catcher hauled in Tim McCarver's foul popup to end the series. Fifty years since me Pops brought home pizza for dinner on a Thursday to celebrate. Since me Mom sowed tiger patches on our clothes to wear to school the next day. I was the happiest eight year old boy on the face of the earth.
McLain wins 31 games on the hill that season. Kaline hits .379 in the series. Horton throws out Brock at home in game five, the play which changed the momentum of the series and led directly to the Detroit win. Lolich, the classic pitcher who couldn't hit, hit his only career homerun in game two and drove in a run later in game five. Oh, and he won three complete games, the last pitcher to do that in a World Series. And of course, manager Mayo Smith putting center fielder Mickey Stanley at short, to get more offense in the lineup. Gutsy, inventive, and successful.
It feels like yesterday. And for the little kid in me, it still feels good.
I'm reading a book on 1968 which, while it touches on all historical events of that year, concentrates on the 1968 baseball season and World Series. As an 8 year thoroughly delighted at the Detroit Tigers' World Championship that year I find myself amazed as a 58 year old that it's been 50 years since it happened. I feel more and more all the time how the old timers must have felt as they aged. It is bittersweet in a way, but damn some of the memories themselves simply do not grow old.
Ah, well, maybe that's all the warblings I've got for today. I'll try harder tomorrow, honest!
Baseball is the peak. The point all others strive for, vainly. The Houston Astros sit there.
This is baseball.
No city, locale, region, no vaguely defined area, wants a Super Bowl more than they want a World Series championship.
Houston now has it. J. J. Watt is a great man. But he did nothing compared to what the Houston Astros just did. The Texans can now rot.
Houston won a World Series.
This is life. This is good. Life begins again in late February, when the first pitch of the Grapefruit League is thrown. See ya then.
Sports Illustrated has predicted that the Cleveland Indians will win the 2015 World Series. Billy Beane, the remarkably successful general manager of the Oakland Athletics, has famously said that the playoffs are a crapshoot. How do these tidbits work together? Well, as SI points out and Beane's remark essentially confirms, the best teams in the regular season don't necessarily win the World Series (or by extension, the Super Bowl or Stanley Cup and so on). Just getting into the postseason is all a team needs in order to have the chance at finishing on top of the heap. SI notes that both World Series participants, the Giants and the Royals, were wild cards in the 2014 playoffs.
This means simply that playoffs aren't fair to the better teams. At the highest levels of play anyone can beat anyone else in a short series, especially as overall weaker teams can shorten their benches. It isn't unusual in baseball for example to see a fifth starter relegated to the bullpen to strengthen it for a short run. But over the course of a full season a team can't do that. It must play its whole team. This is what allows the cream to rise: weaknesses of whole teams tend to get exposed over time. These weaknesses can be hidden in short term events such as playoffs.
On another front, the effect of mere hot streaks, momentum, are generally ameliorated during the regular season. One might win several games in a row, even 10 or 12, but that by itself won't power a team into the playoffs. Such a run in the postseason, even a lesser run such as 11-3 (which would win a baseball World Series) can win championships. By rights, then, they ought to be dismissed as merely lucky when scored against superior opponents.
If sports are supposed to be about fairness and the best team winning, if they are supposed to instruct both participants and the broader society in good sportsmanship and in recognizing and accepting that competition means separating the wheat from the chaff and that there should be no jealousy among us in accepting that, then they need to reassess the idea of playoffs. As Sparky Anderson said, the best team in baseball is the team with the best regular season record and not necessarily the World Series winner.
Playoffs hinder rather than build character and mettle. It's the long haul which creates those virtues in a person. If sports wish to teach society that, they need to instill them within their systems of play. Anything less, and less is what we've got now, is nothing more than bilking people out of their cash with an artificial excitement. Such bread and circuses will only make a nation soft. Both our athletics and ourselves will be weakened.
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